Dirk Matten

Corporations and Citizenship: Corporations as governments

Parliament is no longer sovereign in its decisions. It depends on powerful pressure groups – the banks and multinationals – which are not subject to any democratic control … Democracy has become a pawn to the dictates of globally volatile capital. So can we really be surprised when more and more citizens turn away from such blatant scams … and decline to vote? Gunter Grass, Essay on VE Day, The Guardian , May 7, 2005 Introduction In this chapter, we take up one of the most hotly debated topics in many societies around the globe, namely the role of corporations in the governance of citizenship. The suggestion that governments have ceded authority and that now ‘corporations rule the world’, as the title of a popular book suggests (Korten 2001: 354), is by now fairly commonplace. However, it is important to question the veracity of this claim and, indeed, to explore its implications for citizens and for citizenship more generally. The idea that corporations have taken over from governments is fuelled by a number of phenomena and at different levels. Recent invigoration of the debate, for instance, came from questions about the role of private security organizations in fuelling the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. In Europe, in a similar vein, corporations are increasingly perceived as being more powerful than national governments in tackling the most salient social issues for their citizens, most notably persistently high levels of structural unemployment (Grahl and Teague 1997).

Corporations and Citizenship: List of tables

List of figures List of tables Foreword Preface 1. Introducing corporations and citizenship Part I. Corporations and Citizenship Relationships: 2. Corporations as citizens 3. Corporations as governments 4. Stakeholders as citizens Part II. Corporations and Citizenship Reconfigurations: 5. Citizenship identities and the corporation 6. Citizenship ecologies and the corporation 7. Citizenship, globalization and the corporation 8. Conclusions References Index.It is widely accepted that corporations have economic, legal, and even social roles. Yet the political role of corporations has yet to be fully appreciated. Corporations and Citizenship serves as a corrective by employing the concept of citizenship in order to make sense of the political dimensions of corporations. Citizenship offers a way of thinking about roles and responsibilities among members of polities and between these members and their governing institutions. Crane, Matten and Moon provide a rich and multi-faceted picture that explores three relations of citizenship - corporations as citizens, corporations as governors of citizenship, and corporations as arenas of citizenship for stakeholders - as well as three contemporary reconfigurations of citizenship - cultural (identity-based), ecological, and cosmopolitan citizenship. The book revolutionizes not only our understanding of corporations but also of citizenship as a principle of allocating power and responsibility in a political community.

Corporations and Citizenship: Corporations and citizenship relationships

List of figures List of tables Foreword Preface 1. Introducing corporations and citizenship Part I. Corporations and Citizenship Relationships: 2. Corporations as citizens 3. Corporations as governments 4. Stakeholders as citizens Part II. Corporations and Citizenship Reconfigurations: 5. Citizenship identities and the corporation 6. Citizenship ecologies and the corporation 7. Citizenship, globalization and the corporation 8. Conclusions References Index.It is widely accepted that corporations have economic, legal, and even social roles. Yet the political role of corporations has yet to be fully appreciated. Corporations and Citizenship serves as a corrective by employing the concept of citizenship in order to make sense of the political dimensions of corporations. Citizenship offers a way of thinking about roles and responsibilities among members of polities and between these members and their governing institutions. Crane, Matten and Moon provide a rich and multi-faceted picture that explores three relations of citizenship - corporations as citizens, corporations as governors of citizenship, and corporations as arenas of citizenship for stakeholders - as well as three contemporary reconfigurations of citizenship - cultural (identity-based), ecological, and cosmopolitan citizenship. The book revolutionizes not only our understanding of corporations but also of citizenship as a principle of allocating power and responsibility in a political community.

Corporations and Citizenship: Frontmatter

List of figures List of tables Foreword Preface 1. Introducing corporations and citizenship Part I. Corporations and Citizenship Relationships: 2. Corporations as citizens 3. Corporations as governments 4. Stakeholders as citizens Part II. Corporations and Citizenship Reconfigurations: 5. Citizenship identities and the corporation 6. Citizenship ecologies and the corporation 7. Citizenship, globalization and the corporation 8. Conclusions References Index.It is widely accepted that corporations have economic, legal, and even social roles. Yet the political role of corporations has yet to be fully appreciated. Corporations and Citizenship serves as a corrective by employing the concept of citizenship in order to make sense of the political dimensions of corporations. Citizenship offers a way of thinking about roles and responsibilities among members of polities and between these members and their governing institutions. Crane, Matten and Moon provide a rich and multi-faceted picture that explores three relations of citizenship - corporations as citizens, corporations as governors of citizenship, and corporations as arenas of citizenship for stakeholders - as well as three contemporary reconfigurations of citizenship - cultural (identity-based), ecological, and cosmopolitan citizenship. The book revolutionizes not only our understanding of corporations but also of citizenship as a principle of allocating power and responsibility in a political community.

Corporations and Citizenship: List of figures

List of figures List of tables Foreword Preface 1. Introducing corporations and citizenship Part I. Corporations and Citizenship Relationships: 2. Corporations as citizens 3. Corporations as governments 4. Stakeholders as citizens Part II. Corporations and Citizenship Reconfigurations: 5. Citizenship identities and the corporation 6. Citizenship ecologies and the corporation 7. Citizenship, globalization and the corporation 8. Conclusions References Index.It is widely accepted that corporations have economic, legal, and even social roles. Yet the political role of corporations has yet to be fully appreciated. Corporations and Citizenship serves as a corrective by employing the concept of citizenship in order to make sense of the political dimensions of corporations. Citizenship offers a way of thinking about roles and responsibilities among members of polities and between these members and their governing institutions. Crane, Matten and Moon provide a rich and multi-faceted picture that explores three relations of citizenship - corporations as citizens, corporations as governors of citizenship, and corporations as arenas of citizenship for stakeholders - as well as three contemporary reconfigurations of citizenship - cultural (identity-based), ecological, and cosmopolitan citizenship. The book revolutionizes not only our understanding of corporations but also of citizenship as a principle of allocating power and responsibility in a political community.

Corporations and Citizenship: Acknowledgements

List of figures List of tables Foreword Preface 1. Introducing corporations and citizenship Part I. Corporations and Citizenship Relationships: 2. Corporations as citizens 3. Corporations as governments 4. Stakeholders as citizens Part II. Corporations and Citizenship Reconfigurations: 5. Citizenship identities and the corporation 6. Citizenship ecologies and the corporation 7. Citizenship, globalization and the corporation 8. Conclusions References Index.It is widely accepted that corporations have economic, legal, and even social roles. Yet the political role of corporations has yet to be fully appreciated. Corporations and Citizenship serves as a corrective by employing the concept of citizenship in order to make sense of the political dimensions of corporations. Citizenship offers a way of thinking about roles and responsibilities among members of polities and between these members and their governing institutions. Crane, Matten and Moon provide a rich and multi-faceted picture that explores three relations of citizenship - corporations as citizens, corporations as governors of citizenship, and corporations as arenas of citizenship for stakeholders - as well as three contemporary reconfigurations of citizenship - cultural (identity-based), ecological, and cosmopolitan citizenship. The book revolutionizes not only our understanding of corporations but also of citizenship as a principle of allocating power and responsibility in a political community.

Corporations and Citizenship: Contents

List of figures List of tables Foreword Preface 1. Introducing corporations and citizenship Part I. Corporations and Citizenship Relationships: 2. Corporations as citizens 3. Corporations as governments 4. Stakeholders as citizens Part II. Corporations and Citizenship Reconfigurations: 5. Citizenship identities and the corporation 6. Citizenship ecologies and the corporation 7. Citizenship, globalization and the corporation 8. Conclusions References Index.It is widely accepted that corporations have economic, legal, and even social roles. Yet the political role of corporations has yet to be fully appreciated. Corporations and Citizenship serves as a corrective by employing the concept of citizenship in order to make sense of the political dimensions of corporations. Citizenship offers a way of thinking about roles and responsibilities among members of polities and between these members and their governing institutions. Crane, Matten and Moon provide a rich and multi-faceted picture that explores three relations of citizenship - corporations as citizens, corporations as governors of citizenship, and corporations as arenas of citizenship for stakeholders - as well as three contemporary reconfigurations of citizenship - cultural (identity-based), ecological, and cosmopolitan citizenship. The book revolutionizes not only our understanding of corporations but also of citizenship as a principle of allocating power and responsibility in a political community.

Corporations and Citizenship: Introducing corporations and citizenship

As the world continues to integrate, reconciling the tensions between efficient global economics and local democratic politics will test everyones imagination. Financial Times , Leader comment, 13 June 2006 Introduction The assumption that corporations have economic, legal and even social roles but, beyond these, no political role or significance, is becoming increasingly untenable. Although conventional economic theory continues to be based on a clear divide between economic and political domains, where the state sets the rules within which business must act, a blurring of boundaries between the two domains is clearly in evidence. Wittingly or otherwise, corporations are becoming much more part of politics. They are now more engaged in governmental and inter-governmental rule-making at one extreme, and in community level issue-resolution at the other. The social and economic fortunes of whole communities are subject to corporate discretion to invest or divest, and the power that corporations necessarily possess in these decisions has increasingly brought them into the political sphere. Indeed, global political debates about climate change, conflict, poverty, human rights, equality and social justice, among other things, rarely now take place without some consideration of, or input from, corporations or their representatives. They have even become embroiled in the expression or suppression of particular racial or cultural identities, not only among their workers and consumers, but also among other humans with no obvious interest in their products or services. For some then, corporations should self-evidently be considered as political actors (see Scherer and Palazzo 2007 for a summary).